Blizzard admit the auction house has damaged the game

[BloodOmen]

But how COULD they roll it back? The gold and RM AH are so tightly connected that it would cause players to lose real money if they did that.

That said, you can get about 20 million gold for less then a dollar right now last i heard.....

Exactly my point is the economy was fucked before, now its just going to be none existent, items will go up drastically in price and the amount of money you can earn ingame simply will not support what you need to buy shit due to price hikes.

Blizzard will either have to increase gold drops ingame or shut the AH down forever because right now its beyond repair, I feel the only reason it hasn't been rubbed out already is because Blizzard enjoy the free money they get from the RMAH.

 

[BloodOmen]

Hmm seems they are doing something about it after all

http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/05/09/diablo-iii-auction-house-down-for-at-least-another-24-hours/

"You may remember that a couple of days ago, the Diablo III auction house went down for a time due to a gold duplication bug that was being rampantly exploited by players. Thankfully, a patch was deployed in a nice, timely manner, and everything ended up all right.

Or did it? Rather than performing a server rollback, which would set all Diablo III players back, Blizzard has decided to perform a complete audit of the transactions made on the auction house in order to find players guilty of utilizing the gold duplication exploit. Unfortunately, Blizz was a bit conservative in its estimate of how long the auction house would be down. While there's currently no new ETA for the auction house's return, a post by Blizzard CM Lylirra states that the studio anticipates the AH being down for "at least another 24 hours" while the audits are in progress."

So if you've knowingly exploited prepare to get fucked royally ^_^

 

[Madmaxx]

good.

 

[BloodOmen]

lol my Barb is on paragon 1 man, fooook me no way am I carrying on another 99 levels. Only reason I'm playing now is because I want to beat the game on Inferno :-/

Told you Paragon levels were proper boring didn't I ? it's such a piss poor way of prolonging the game.

 

[TdC]

Yeah man totally Currently on my final barb playthrough at inferno level and I guesstimate I will be PL 4 or so when I complete the game. To my *great* surprise I actually picked up two pieces of armour that were better than what I had so I'm now rocking new shoulders and gloves. Been concentrating on stuff that offers element and physical resistance but I still perish horribly when confronted with enemies that have the right combination of offensive spells (molten/arcane). My first foray in to the desert and I got jumped by two sets of rare monsters at once with those exact features and I died like 12 times in a row 0o

 

[BloodOmen]

The next patch will hopefully make the game a little more fun to play rather than having to rely on the auction house to find gear, they're optimizing gear so it drops less often but the stats are much better than current gear in the next patch.

 

[TdC]

I hope so because like I've been saying the specs of drops and merchants are woeful to be honest

 

[Ctuchik]

Not to forget that i've never had gear drops that weren't like 10 levels below me so they are useless by default even if it had somewhat correct stats.

Hell i can't even CRAFT level appropriate gear most of the time. It's either 20 levels to low or 20 levels to high.

 

[BloodOmen]

Yea, when I was going from paragon 40-54 I think I found 1 or 2 items that were actually good for any class, every single other item I found during that period was literally vendor/salvage crap and that was from only picking up ilvl 61-63 stuff.

 

[Ctuchik]

The next patch will hopefully make the game a little more fun to play rather than having to rely on the auction house to find gear, they're optimizing gear so it drops less often but the stats are much better than current gear in the next patch.

Is there any PTR patch notes for that? Can't seem to find any. Last one is the 1.0.8 that's been released already...

/edit: nvm found something..

http://diablo.somepage.com/info/patches-future

 

[BloodOmen]

"Less is More
Between Paragon levels, Nephalem Valor stacks, and all the other assorted buffs and bonuses, it's possible to find a tremendous amount of Rare items during any given play session. But the quality of these Rare items just isn't where it needs to be, so even though players see a lot of them, they no longer feel special. When you identify hundreds of Rares and only a small percentage are worth equipping or selling, those items become a burden rather than something to get excited about. "Great. Now I have to identify them all, read their stats, and I’m probably going to salvage all of them." I feel your pain.
We want to make it fun and rewarding to hunt down new items through play, and really instill the feeling that your next awesome item could come from anywhere, and is just around the corner. We need to get rid of some of the clutter first, so we plan to reduce the frequency at which Rare items drop down the road.
Before anyone panics and posts an angry comment in the forums, this doesn't mean we want players to earn even fewer good items. It just means we don't feel it's necessary to present the player with hundreds of bad Rares for every one that they might want. As an example, suppose items currently roll between 1-100 Intelligence. Now, imagine that we dropped 25% as many items, but the Intelligence range was instead somewhere around 75-100. In the end, you'd find fewer items, but more of the items you find would be worth equipping. That's our goal.
(On the topic of identifying hundreds of Rares, it's worth adding that while most of this blog is about overall item philosophy and our goals down the road, one of the short-term changes we're making is adding an "Identify All" option, which should be coming in 1.0.8.)"

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/8953696/

 

[Raven]

They could also remove all the bows with str or int on too. Utter waste of everyone's time.

I might install again to have a look, nothing to lose. Not played at all really since dinging max level.

 

[Ctuchik]

Yeah it sure *sounds* good, but talking is cheap... And i don't know if i want to trust them...

They could also remove all the bows with str or int on too. Utter waste of everyone's time.

They will.

http://diablo.somepage.com/blue/8087879561-latest-developer-journal-now-up

Removing "Bad Stats" on Class-Specific Items: "Class specific items can roll non class appropriate primary stats, we have plans to change this down the road. While random really is at the core of Diablo in so many ways this is certainly one of the areas where it has no potential to benefit players. Wizards don't use Strength, Demon Hunters don't use Intelligence so let's just remove those as potential random attributes on Orbs and Quivers respectively."

 

[BloodOmen]

Just have to wait and see how it goes I guess, I'm happy that they're trying to improve the game but I'm still annoyed that they screwed it up in the first place.

 

[BloodOmen]

And another nice read - taken from Massively.

"After his departure from the Diablo III development team, Game Director Jay Wilson released a statement that the introduction of an auction house "really hurt the game." While players predicted doom the moment the Real Money Auction House was announced, Jay argued that the gold auction house was equally to blame for the game's fall from grace following an absolutely stellar launch sales. I don't normally agree with what Jay has to say on Diablo III, but in this case he does have a very valid point.

Diablo II was consistently popular for over a decade thanks to its immense replayability. At its core, D2was a game about building new characters and gearing them up by any means necessary. Every enemy in the game was a loot pinata just waiting to be popped, and players farmed endlessly for a few sought-after unique items. You almost never found an item that was ideal for your particular class and build, but you could usually trade for what you needed via trade channels and forums.

Blizzard claimed that the auction house was intended just to streamline this process, but when Diablo IIIlaunched, it was clear that the entire game had been designed to make the auction house almost necessary for progress. The fault here lies not just with the concept of an auction house but with the game designers.

That's right: I'm here to argue not only that Jay Wilson was right about the auction house ruining Diablo IIIbut also that it was his own damn fault.

The AH distorted value and rarity

Blizzard had access to hard data on drop rates and item stats from Diablo II when designing the sequel and claimed that legendary items at D3's launch were about as rare as uniques in its predecessor. Players always complained that the drop rates were lower, but there's no reason to think Blizzard didn't use all the stats at its disposal and match up the drop rates. So why then did good items seem so rare? I think this was completely the auction house's fault. By showing up to several million players' items in one searchable place, the Auction House distorted the appearance of rarity and value.

In a grey economy such as trading on a forum, you see only a small percentage of the items for sale and have to invest effort in looking for what you want to get your hands on. Even World of Warcraft's auction houses exhibit roughly the same behaviour because each shard contains only about 5,000 players. But when you find what looks like a good item in Diablo III, it inevitably turns out to be not quite as good as you thought because there are so many better ones already on the auction house. If you can see the farming output of millions of players and compare it to your own findings, of course your loot is going to seem like crap. Ironically, this problem has lessened over time only because Diablo III's playerbase has been shrinking since launch.

Linear item power made the AH an easy option

While it's possible to blame the auction house itself on the apparent low quality of loot in Diablo III, a large part of the blame has to lie with the game designers. Buying items on the auction house was always the easiest way to progress through the game, making it almost mandatory. The main reason for this is that items in D3 had built-in linear power progression. Each item has an item level that determines its maximum stat budget just as inWorld of Warcraft, making gear from further along in the game almost automatically better than gear from earlier areas. The auction house then made that gear readily and cheaply available to everyone.

For example, a level 61 item that was common in Act 1 Inferno at launch physically couldn't roll as high damage or intelligence as an item level 63 item that you could reasonably farm only in Act 3 or 4. The result was that if you were stuck in Act 1, the quickest way to progress was to buy some good gear from Act 2, 3 or 4. When you finally beat Act 1, you'd then already have better gear than you were likely to find on your own. It was also often difficult to judge whether items you found were worth selling on the auction house, and with only 10 AH slots available you couldn't realistically list every item you found.

This same problem existed all throughout the game's 60-level race to Inferno too, with the easiest way to progress always being to skip ahead on the loot curve by throwing some gold at the auction house. But in doing so, you forfeited the ability to find nice loot for the forseeable future. This is probably why so many people complained about never finding any gear upgrades that they could actually use. (In fairness, this is something that developers have since fixed by making all of Inferno drop level 63 items and adding the Monster Power system.)

Gear should be a customisation system

Gear in an Action RPG is always a form of character customisation, with certain items synergising well with particular character builds. But when most items in D3 are directly compared, one is usually categorically better than the other regardless of build. This seems to have been done intentionally so that every item in D3 can be reduced to a three easily comparable numbers: Damage, Health, and Protection. Blizzard even built this into the UI as a way to easily compare two pieces of gear, so this stat simplification was clearly no accident.

Certain builds require minimum levels of Life on Hit, Lifesteal, or resource-generation stats, but at the upper end of the gear treadmill, nothing beats pure all-out damage. Rares can have up to six stats, but each slot still has an optimum set of stats to aim for that maximises its contribution to your damage output or survivability. The decision to dumb Diablo III's loot down for easy comparison robbed the game of character customisation options and reinforced the linear power scale for items. The auction house didn't do this; Blizzard did.

Bringing back things from D2 that worked

In other action RPGs, low-level or poorly rolled items can still be valuable to high-level players because they can still roll a few key stats that synergise well with a particular build. A good example is Diablo II's Stone of Jordan, which is one of the most sought-after unique rings in the game despite being a level 29 ring that can drop in Nightmare mode. Many other items gave unique auras, skills, and bonuses that synergised well with particular skills and you didn't have to sacrifice raw damage to use them.

The number one thing Blizzard could do to fix Diablo III now is to introduce ladder seasons. Periodically resetting the ladder is what has kept Diablo II running to this day, as it wipes the game economy clean and everyone who wants to can start fresh. The gold supply would be reset and items that are mediocre by today's standards would be rare and useful again. Starting a ladder with no auction house could help improve the perception of loot quality, and the fact that the ladder will be reset again soon means drop rates can be increased significantly without impacting future ladders. New seasons could also let developers test big itemisation changes without interfering with the rest of the game."

 

[Madmaxx]

my friend just asked why I haven't played D3 recently I said I completed it, he said "how the fuck did you complete it if your not paragon lvl100".

I just said why would I wait to do d3 on mp10 at paragon 100 when I can do it easily at paragon 30 with no reward.

I just can't be bothered with it anymore but I will say 1 of the later patches with increased mob density and ID all items was good but the drops SUCK SO MUCH its unreal.

Got a new massacre record in festering woods and I ported into a crypt without doing the whole map, I shoulda kept going

 

[BloodOmen]

technically you can never complete an action rpg, the games are mostly based around loot and there will always be loot to upgrade even if it is mega rare to complete diablo 3 tho all you have to do is goto the auction house and throw 2billion gold at it then have fun doing mp10 for no rewards.

 

[Madmaxx]

the AH ruined D3 for me as I never played a diablo game type before, so I got to 60 struggled a bit on mp's..so just bought a full set of items for 450k or less (watched a guide for a 169k budget) and could do mp1-2 quite alright, then did the same with a 1mill budget for mp5...then 5mill and I can do mp7-8 easily and mp10 pretty well.
But where I get shit drops I just cant progress, like the other day my first decent leggie in 2 days ! a wizzy helm no less ! got a roll of 196 strength on it ! you fucking game hah

 

[old.Tohtori]

When i first completed HC solo i was happy to retire really

 

[BloodOmen]

Classes in general disappoint aswell, I really wish they would have just stuck to their initial idea of talent tree's with the XXXXXXXXX builds they promised, that alone would have made the game more fun... now its what?

Viable builds to do MP5+

CM Wizard
Archon Wizard
WW Barb
Throw Barb
Rend Barb
Tempest Rush Monk
Dual Wield/Sweeping Wind Monk

And god knows what else people have come up with for other classes, hardly a wide range of builds that work on higher mp's... leveled my monks paragon levels as Tempest Rush and Dual Wield/Sweep Wind and it was the most mind numbingly boring thing I'd ever done, yet virtually no other builds are viable for doing higher mp's efficiently.... Diablo II had loads of builds that worked on the hardest difficulty.

They've got some work to do and if they don't do it more rapidly I can almost guarantee Diablo III will not outlive Diablo II. In a feeble desperation attempt I can see them rushing expansions out with missing features/changes that should have been apart of the initial release which would just be plain lazy.

 

[Ctuchik]

In a feeble desperation attempt I can see them rushing expansions out with missing features/changes that should have been apart of the initial release which would just be plain lazy.

And it would backfire nightmarishly hard.... IF they do an expansion now it HAS to be absolutely spot on. Anything less at this point and the players will eat them alive.

 

[old.Tohtori]

And it would backfire nightmarishly hard.... IF they do an expansion now it HAS to be absolutely spot on. Anything less at this point and the players will eat them alive.

It might be more profitable to leave expansions out, seeing as how the players did receive the game. Unless they remove always online, add modding etc that players want. You know, big stuff.

 

[TdC]

huff, I'l already bored with the game tbh. Up against Diablo now and the way he takes out my barb at this level is just too funny with those green explody things. With some luck I grind him down to about 50% health and then just bite the dust. I think I died like 15 times 0o </noob>

 

[Ctuchik]

huff, I'l already bored with the game tbh. Up against Diablo now and the way he takes out my barb at this level is just too funny with those green explody things. With some luck I grind him down to about 50% health and then just bite the dust. I think I died like 15 times 0o </noob>

Yeah they went overboard with the needed gear grind to progress. D1 and D2 didn't need half as much of that crap from what i remember.

 

[BloodOmen]

Yeah they went overboard with the needed gear grind to progress. D1 and D2 didn't need half as much of that crap from what i remember.

Indeed, you could do most of D2 with the skill synergies alone in the end. Even the very start of D2 before skill synergies appeared you could do most of it without gear/good gear.

 

[Bahumat]

huff, I'l already bored with the game tbh. Up against Diablo now and the way he takes out my barb at this level is just too funny with those green explody things. With some luck I grind him down to about 50% health and then just bite the dust. I think I died like 15 times 0o </noob>

Green explody things??? I played it through a few weeks back on monster level 10 as a wizard. It's super easy

 

[BloodOmen]

Green explody things??? I played it through a few weeks back on monster level 10 as a wizard. It's super easy

yea, cm wizzie is pretty effortless once you have enough crit can just freeze everything perma, such a boring way to play tho.

 

[TdC]

Green explody things??? I played it through a few weeks back on monster level 10 as a wizard. It's super easy

erm...like a poison pit or something? lava pit but green. I'm on Inferno and my barb just fades away

 

[Bahumat]

yea, cm wizzie is pretty effortless once you have enough crit can just freeze everything perma, such a boring way to play tho.

Oh I don't have any of that. Just the absorption armour buff, the hydra's, the ice rain to snare and a couple of orb aoe's. I bought a weapon with level reduction on so I can 3 hit everything.